San Diego’s cultural film festival circuit gets more diverse this year with the city’s first Arab Film Festival, taking place Friday and Saturday at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. Though the festival is smaller in scale than its more established local counterparts such as the Asian, Latino and Jewish film festivals, organizers hope their lineup of three features and five short films from six countries will open the door to increased cross-cultural communication and understanding of the Middle East.

“We’re trying to put forward information and examples to show that these are real, human people with hopes and aspirations that aren’t very much different than our own,” said Larry Christian, a board member of Karama, the local nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting understanding of the Arab and Islamic world and a co-sponsor of the festival with the San Francisco-based Arab Film Festival. “The festival seemed like a terrific opportunity to be able to do that, because people these days don’t really think of the Arab world in terms of its cultural contributions.”

The festival starts on a humorous note with the Lebanese film “Where Do We Go Now?” about frustrated wives in a religiously divided village going to comical lengths to distract their husbands from their sectarian squabbles. Nasser Barghouti, another festival volunteer, appreciates director Nadine Labaki’s ability to address Lebanese society’s “obsession with sectarianism” while also revealing Lebanon as “a very fun place to be.”

On Day Two, director Abdallah Omeish will be in attendance to discuss his documentary “The War Around Us,” about an Arab-American journalist in Gaza caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas.

Rounding out the two-day event are short films from Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the feature film “Masquerades,” a satirical comedy that sends up the outdated marriage traditions of an Algerian village.

Outside of New York or Los Angeles, Middle Eastern films are hard to come by in a theatrical setting, and based on past screenings Karama has held over the years, the desire is there — and not just within the Arab community. “We noticed that the real interest was not just in political films, but also cultural films, films about society. That’s where the idea for the festival came from,” said Karama’s Christian. “I think there’s a desire from the different communities in San Diego to see different films from different countries.”

Considering that management from some of San Diego’s coffee shops refused to display the festival’s postcards, citing fear of negative feedback from their customers, there’s more than just a desire for greater understanding — there’s a need.